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Dana Scully
Scully redirects here. For other people of the same last name see Scully (disambiguation). Dana Katherine Scully (played by Gillian Anderson) was an FBI Special Agent and medical doctor with a background in hard science who brought her scientific expertise and perspective to the X-Files. (TXF: "Pilot", et al.) In 2002, she went on the run from the law with her former partner, Fox Mulder. (TXF: "The Truth") She is the daughter of William and Margaret Scully, and the sister of Melissa, Bill, Jr., and Charles Scully. :Her mother and father first appeared in in "Beyond the Sea". Her sister, Melissa, was first seen in a flashback in "One Breath", and later as an adult in "The Blessing Way". Her brother, Bill, was first seen in "Gethsemane", and her brother, Charles, was only seen in a flashback in "One Breath". Childhood & Teenage Years Dana Scully was born on February 23, 1964. (TXF: "Lazarus", "One Breath") Her childhood ambitions did not include becoming an astronaut but she did want to get a pony and learn how to braid her own hair. (TXF: "Space") :''It is not entirely certain if Scully is being honest when she tells Mulder her childhood ambitions in "Space" as she reveals them sarcastically, after Mulder tells her about his own boyhood ambitions. However, given the fact that Scully has no motive to lie, it seems likely that she is telling the truth. On several occassions, Dana's father made her and one or more of her siblings take the family Christmas tree down on the day immediately after Christmas. :It's unknown how many times this happened and which of Dana's siblings helped her. Evidence of this routine comes in the form of Dana recalling, in "Beyond the Sea", that her father "always made us take the Christmas tree down the day after Christmas." For some or all of her fourteenth year, Dana lived with her parents in a house that had two or more floors, and a porch outside. She slept in an upstairs room of the house. Once, when she was 14, Dana snuck downstairs alone, after her parents had gone to bed. She got one of her mother's cigarettes and went out onto the porch in the dark. She was incredibly scared and her heart was beating, although she was extremely excited - not because of the cigarette, which she found "gross", but because she wasn’t supposed to take it and because she was aware that her parents would be extremely angered if they discovered that she had. (TXF: "Beyond the Sea") ---- Her father, William Scully was a rear-admiral in the US Navy and, as a consequence, the Scully family moved around a lot. She had two brothers, Bill Jr. and Charles (the former older, the latter younger) and an older sister, Melissa. Dana's father used to read Herman Melville's Moby Dick to her when she was a girl. They gave each other nicknames from the book. She called her father Ahab, the captain of the Pequod and he called her Starbuck, the ship's First Mate. (TXF: "Quagmire") As a child, Dana was a tomboy, unlike her sister, Melissa. She played with her brothers a lot and they got her a B.B. gun for one of her birthdays. While they were teaching her to use it, Bill Jr. found a garter snake and they shot at it, despite their father telling them to only shoot at cans. Dana was filled with remorse and cried when the snake died. (TXF: "One Breath") The Scully family was once stationed at Miramar Naval Air Station. She went to school there with Richard Johansen, son of Commander Johansen. She and the other children used to play a game called beckons wanted on the footpath outside Commander Johansen's house. Richard Johansen was killed in the Gulf War. (TXF: "Piper Maru") In 1966, the Scully family were in Nagoya Farmer's Market, Japan. (TXF: "Christmas Carol") When Dana and Melissa were fifteen her mother gave them a gold cross necklace each. (TXF: "Christmas Carol") Education and Early FBI Career University of Maryland Dana Scully studied at the University of Maryland, where she learned from one of her professors, a Doctor Diamond, that "humans are top carnivores, we sit at the top of the food chain and we reduce other species' chances of survival". (TXF: "The Jersey Devil") :It is not completely certain that Scully did study under Dr. Diamond, but that seems highly likely as his speciality is anthropology, the same subject that Scully shows an impressive knowledge of. In "The Jersey Devil", Dr. Diamond remarks on her understanding of the subject by commenting to Mulder, "Nice to know Dana left here with more than a degree". The doctor's use of Scully's first name implies a certain personal aspect to their relationship. Also, Scully's duration at the University of Maryland would seem more probable than any other period in Scully's history for her to have met the doctor. .]] While studying for an undergraduate degree in physics, Scully wrote her senior thesis, entitled Einstein's Twin Paradox: A New Interpretation, which was published in 1986, when she was aged 23. (TXF: "Pilot", "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man") She graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree. (TXF: "The Jersey Devil") :Curiously, Scully's thesis, which appears in "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man", seems to include references to MJ-12 and the establishment of a "super-secret" operation during the Eisenhower administration. Medical School and Early Medical Career Scully went to medical school but chose not to practice medicine. (TXF: "Pilot") She did her residency in forensic medicine and learned that severely burnt bodies could sometimes show cadaveric heat rigor or heat stiffening. (TXF: "Fallen Angel") While studying for her medical boards, she forgot her own birthday. (TXF: "Lazarus") FBI Training and Early Career While studying at medical school just prior to March 1990, Scully was recruited by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Believing the FBI was a place where she could distinguish herself, Scully attended the FBI Academy. (TXF: "Pilot") Other members of her class included Marty Neil, nicknamed "J. Edgar, Jr." by Scully and some or all of her classmates, and Tom Colton. (TXF: "Squeeze") :When Scully refers to former classmate Marty Neil as "J. Edgar Junior" in "Squeeze", Tom Colton's comprehension of the reference indicates that the nickname was not only used by Scully, but by others as well. It is uncertain how many of Scully's classmates used the name, however. Scully would also become familiar with the forensics instructor at the Academy, Nancy Spiller, who she and at least some of her classmates nicknamed "the Iron Maiden". (TXF: "Ghost in the Machine") :In "Ghost in the Machine", when asked by Jerry Lamana if she is familiar with Nancy Spiller, Scully tells Mulder, who is not familiar with the instructor, "We used to call her the Iron Maiden", before Jerry Lamana adds, "On a good day!" This establishes that both Scully and Lamana used the nickname. Given that Scully had never met Jerry Lamana until moments before this statement, it is likely that other students also used the nickname, although how many is uncertain. Another of Scully's instructors was Jack Willis. The two had the same birthday and, after dating for almost a year, they became romantically involved in a relationship that lasted at least until 1991. (TXF: "Lazarus") In her first day at the Academy, Scully learned that every fingerprint is unique. (TXF: "Squeeze") :It is not certain that this was true of Scully, though it is probable, as she does not correct Mulder when he says it is true of them both. She later accepted a position as instructor at the Academy. (TXF: "Pilot") Assignment to the X-Files .]] In March 1992, while still teaching at the Academy, Scully attended a meeting where her career was reviewed by FBI Division Chief Scott Blevins, the Cigarette Smoking Man and a third man. She was instructed by Division Chief Blevins to work with Fox Mulder, who she already knew by reputation. Due to Blevins' belief that Mulder had developed a consuming devotion to the X-Files, Scully was assigned to assist her new partner in his investigations of the files, to write field reports on their activites and to provide observations on the validity of their work. (TXF: "Pilot") Prior to her new assignment, she had occasionally spent days in court. (TXF: "Fire") :In "Fire", she states, "I forgot what it was like to spend a day in court", implying that she had done so on several occasions previously. When this was is not entirely certain, although the most likely time would be prior to her assignment to the X-Files, allowing her enough time between the events before her assignment and the October 1993 setting of "Fire" for her to forget her days in court. The first X-File that Scully investigated with Mulder involved the unexplained deaths of several high school students. For the first time in her life, Scully witnessed the exhumation of a coffin, in which one of the victims had been buried. After it was discovered that the body inside the coffin was actually a desecated, mummified corpse that did not seem human, Scully examined the deceased body, determining that it was indeed not human but mammalian and finding a grey metallic implant in the subject's nasal cavity. As the other victims' bodies had been found with two small bumps on each of their backs, Scully was extremely worried when she discovered two similar marks on her own back but her fears were put to rest when she learned that the marks were only misquito bites. Though she refuted Mulder's claims of alien existence and his definition of "time loss" for a peculiar experience the agents shared, Scully was alarmed but accepting when she discovered evidence seemingly suggesting that Billy Miles, a paralyzed teenage boy, was the actual killer. At one point, Scully was struck across the head by the butt of a gun belonging to the boy's detective father, who had demanded that she and Mulder leave the area and stay away from his son. Later, however, Billy Miles' paralysis suddenly disappeared and he claimed to have been acting under orders provided to him through an implant in his nose, a claim that was supported when Scully showed her superiors the metallic object she had found in the exhumed body's nose earlier. (TXF: "Pilot") On the X-Files that Scully subsequently investigated with Mulder, she typically remained skeptical. (TXF: "Deep Throat", "Squeeze", et al.) In July 1993, Scully's former classmate from the FBI Academy, Tom Colton, introduced her to a case involving a series of murders in which each victim's liver had been ripped out of their body. While working on the case with Colton and Mulder, as well as members of both the Baltimore Police Department and the FBI's Violent Crimes Section, Scully was attacked by the murderer, Eugene Victor Tooms, in the bathroom of her own apartment. Moments before Tooms could rip Scully's liver from her body, Mulder burst into her apartment, having learned of Scully's danger. Together, the agents were able to handcuff the killer, who was ultimately jailed. (TXF: "Squeeze") On another early investigation, Scully worked with Mulder on a case that involved the disappearance of Colonel Robert Budahas and reports of UFO activity near Ellens Air Base. After Mulder went missing, Scully captured an employee from the military base, who had lied that he was a reporter, and discovered that Mulder was being held captive in the base. She managed to arrange Mulder's release by exchanging her prisoner for him. As Colonel Budahas had been returned, Scully closed the case, file DF101364, in the belief that she and Mulder had learned nothing while attempting to investigate it. (TXF: "Deep Throat") In September 1993, Scully took time off to concentrate on her personal life, leaving Mulder to investigate a murder case in which he believed the killer was the mythological Jersey Devil. However, she later helped her FBI partner with the case by taking him to see her former professor, Dr. Diamond, at the University of Maryland. From then on, Scully continued to assist Mulder with the investigation. (TXF: "The Jersey Devil") Later that month, Scully helped investigate several murders which Mulder believed had been committed by a poltergeist. During the investigation, she and Mulder were involved in an unexplained automobile collision when the agents oddly lost all control of their vehicle and it reversed into another motor car. However, both agents, and the driver of the other vehicle were uninjured. Scully confirmed that she was fine by being checked out by paramedics, but she soon after complained to Mulder of having a "waiting-in-line-at-the-DMV-sized" headache. (TXF: "Shadows") In October 1993, Scully spent a day in court with Mulder, a rare event while the agents had been investigating the X-Files. Scully's attitude to the files themselves was occasionally mocking - soon after leaving the court, she joked that Mulder finding his car unlocked, when he felt sure he had indeed locked the vehicle, was likely an X-File. She subsequently worked on developing a profile that helped to catch murderous arsonist Cecil L'Ively. (TXF: "Fire") Later that month, while investigating a case that initially did not seem to be an X-File, the agents encountered a murderous Central Operating System in control of a building where it was housed. In its attempts to remain active, the computer system presented the agents with a series of challenges, including the sudden halting of an elevator, which threw Scully to the floor but did not harm her, and the electrifying of a door to a room from where the computer system could be shut down. Scully tried to access the computer room by climbing into and through air-ducts in the building, but, while air was being sucked out of the ducts by the operating system, she found it difficult to breath, and was pulled backwards towards a dangerously revolving ventilator fan. After she managed to escape from danger by shooting the fan, Scully helped enable Mulder to infect the computer system with a virus that caused the system's destruction. (TXF: "Ghost in the Machine") After Mulder was captured by the US Army while intruding on an area of Townsend, Wisconson that they had quarantined, Scully learned that Section Chief McGrath had ordered a full inquiry with a recommendation that the X-Files be shut down. She was assigned to bring Mulder back to Washington, D.C. before a hearing with McGrath. Although she ultimately completed her assignment, Scully first helped her FBI partner investigate the area where he had been captured, lending assistance to medical staff at County Hospital in Townsend as they worked on saving several soldiers inflicted with extreme burn wounds after having entered the same area as Mulder. Unfortunately, Scully and the hospital medical staff only managed to save two soldiers. During the investigation, Mulder and Scully also met Max Fenig, who referred to the latter as "the enigmatic Doctor Scully". After she and Mulder returned to the FBI's headquarters, Scully alone defended her FBI partner before he was questioned himself. Fortunately for them both, the X-Files continued to remain open. (TXF: "Fallen Angel") While investigating a peculiar double murder case, Scully first encountered several clones, two of whom were young members of the Lichfield Experiment's Eve Series and had each individually killed their own father at exactly the same time. As she and Mulder worked on the case, Scully was assaulted by an older member of the Eve Series and consequently lost consciousness. Later, Scully drank a diet soda, unaware that it had been poisoned by the two seemingly innocent cloned girls, but she fortunately didn't drink enough to even make her sick before she and Mulder discovered that the clones were actually malevolent and were guilty of having murdered their fathers. Although the girls tried to escape, they were ultimately caught, in part thanks to Scully, and were confined to the Whiting Institute for the Criminally Insane. (TXF: "Eve") In January 1994, Scully's father died. Strangely, she thought she saw him in her house before she was informed of his death, although the image she believed she had seen subsequently disappeared. She returned to work immediately and soon encountered Luther Lee Boggs, a criminal on death row who claimed he was capable of channeling souls. Despite her usual skepticism regarding similarly bizarre explanations, Scully opened her mind to believe Boggs' claim, after he seemed to be channeling the soul of her recently deceased father. By following clues provided to her by Boggs, Scully was able to save the lives of two innocent teenagers, Elizabeth Hawley and James Summers, and managed to evade death herself. However, after Boggs was executed, Scully began to rationalize the nature of the information he had given her, admitting that the reason she could not continue to believe in extreme possibilities was due to her intense fear to believe. (TXF: "Beyond the Sea") While investigating the possibility that the Kindred - a sect of religious isolationists - had been involved in a series of murders in which each victim's body showed the presence of huge amounts of pheromones, Scully acted stunned when she twice had hand-to-hand contact with a male member of the Kindred called Brother Andrew and, on the second occassion, was rendered motionless, unable to resist an attempt by Brother Andrew to seduce her. After Mulder freed her from the situation, she lost all memory of the event. However, with information that Brother Andrew had provided her, Scully and her FBI partner realized that the murders had been committed by a single killer, Brother Martin, who had once been a member of the Kindred. Scully was assaulted by both Brothers Andrew and Martin before they and the rest of their sect entirely disappeared. (TXF: "Gender Bender") After the X-Files Closed Return to Teaching Abduction Continuation of the X-Files .]] Aftermath Return to the X-Files Supervising Students & Agents .]] Career History * 1982-1986- University of Maryland student * 1986-1989- Medical school student * 1989-1990- Hospital Resident * 1990- FBI Academy student, instructor FBI Agent Jack Willis * 1990-1992 Instructor, FBI Academy * 1992-1994 FBI Special Agent, X-Files Section, partner Special Agent Fox Mulder, supervisor Division Chief Scott Blevins * 1994- Instructor, FBI Academy * 1994-1998 FBI Special Agent, X-Files Section, partner Special Agent Fox Mulder, supervisor Assistant Director Walter Skinner * 1998- FBI Special Agent, partner Special Agent Fox Mulder, supervisor FBI Agent Darius Michaud * 1998-1999- FBI Special Agent, partner Special Agent Fox Mulder, supervisor Assistant Director Alvin Kersh * 1999-2000- FBI Special Agent, X-Files Section, partner Special Agent Fox Mulder, supervisor Assistant Director Walter Skinner * 2000-2001- FBI Special Agent, X-Files Section, partner Special Agent John Doggett, supervisor Assistant Director Walter Skinner * 2001-2002- Forensics Investigations Instructor, FBI Academy Scully, Dana Relationships Family William Scully Dana Scully was always very close to her father and they had nicknames for each other from the book Moby Dick by Herman Melville, which he used to read to her when she was a little girl. She called him Ahab, the single-minded captain of the Pequod and he called her Starbuck, the ship's First Mate. Scully was always worried that her father was disappointed in her choice to leave a career in medicine behind and join the FBI. After Scully's father died suddenly, he appeared to her just before she got the call from her mother to tell her he had passed away. In the vision of him, he was sitting in an armchair and appeared to be speaking. However, Dana can not hear what he was saying. Soon after his death Scully and Mulder were working on a case involving Luther Lee Boggs. He claimed to be channeling information about a serial killer. He also claimed that he had a message for Scully from her father. Throughout the case she was torn by grief and wanting to know what he has to say from her father. Boggs tried to use this as a bargaining tool but Scully didn't give into him. She tells Mulder that she was afraid to hear the message, afraid to believe Boggs was genuine. When Mulder asked her could she not face that fear to know what her father wanted to say, she told him she does know because he was her father. (TXF: "Beyond the Sea") When Scully was abducted, her deceased father came to her in a vision as she lay between the world of the living and the dead. He told her it was not the time for them to be together again, but soon. He used their nicknames for each other when talking to Dana. (TXF: "One Breath") Margaret Scully Margaret Scully was a strong supportive mother to Dana. She was sometimes frustrated when Scully does not always tell her what's going on in her life. However, when she really needed support and help, Dana always went to her mother in the end. She told Mulder a memory of when Dana was a girl and was playing with a B. B. gun her brothers had given her. Dana is overcome with remorse after she shot and killed a grass snake, she held the snake in her hands willing it to live and Margaret says how she knows how her daughter felt that day now that she faced the choice of keeping Dana on life support or letting her go. Melissa Scully Melissa and Dana were two very different people. Melissa believed in new age and mysticism, whereas Dana was a firm believer in hard science. Melissa came to see Dana when she had returned to the hospital after her abduction and claimed she could feel Dana's spirit was still inside her body. She was the one who persuaded Mulder to really talk to Scully before it was too late. (TXF: "One Breath") Sadly, Melissa was killed by mistake by Luis Cardinal and Alex Krycek, who were really trying to kill Scully. She was shot in the head as she entered Scully's apartment (TXF: "The Blessing Way"). Scully eventually caught Luis Cardinal with Skinner's help. Cardinal later died in his cell, his death made to look like a suicide. (TXF: "Apocrypha") Bill Scully, Jr. Charles Scully William Scully III Romantic Interests Marcus Scully went with her boyfriend Marcus to her Senior Prom in 1982. They attended a campfire party afterwards that was interrupted by the local fire department. (TXF: "Small Potatoes") Daniel Waterston Daniel Waterston was a doctor and taught Scully when she was in medical school. He and Scully had an affair, an affair that ended when she left to join the FBI. She met him again when he was in hospital after suffering from severe chest pains. Dr. Waterston told Dana of how after she left he shut down and withdrew from his family and he and his wife eventually divorced. Scully is shocked when he told her he came to Washington ten years ago, for her. He told her she was all he lived for. Scully speculated that maybe the only reason he was alive now was to make amends for the hurt he caused his daughter Maggie. Dana made it clear that she was a different person when she met him again and that there is no future for them together. (TXF: "all things") Jack Willis Jack Willis was an FBI agent and Scully's instructor while she was training to be an agent. They dated each other for over a year and they even had the same birthday. Scully worked with Willis when he had gotten a tip off about the next bank to be hit by James Warren Dupre and Lula Phillips. Dupre shot Willis and Scully shot Dupre, they both end up next to each other in the hospital. Dupre died and Willis lived, but Mulder became suspicious as to who exactly came back in Agent Willis's body. Willis kidnapped Scully and went to find his wife Lula. While Willis was with Lula and held Scully hostage, she tried to persuade him that he is in fact Jack Willis and not Dupre. Jack Willis was diabetic and Dupre had been drinking a lot of soda, Willis started to exhibit the symptoms of imminent diabetic coma. Lula revealed that she had given the tip off and betrayed Dupre, Willis shot her in the stomach and died shortly afterward. Mulder and other FBI agents had mounted an operation to recover Scully but arrived too late to save Willis. (TXF: "Lazarus") Rob Colleagues and Mentors Richard Johansen Kelly Ryan Scott Blevins Fox Mulder From the onset of their working relationship, Scully has been quick to question Mulder's ardent fascination in paranormal phoenomena. Being a skeptic regarding matters of the paranormal, Scully attempts to uncover reasonable and scientific explanations to the unusual things she and Mulder see during their work on the X-Files. However, over time Scully grew to admire Mulder a great deal, and even displayed signs of jealousy towards women who appeared to be on more intimate terms with him, such as Diane Fowley. Eventually, when it was revealed that she could possibly bear children, she asked Mulder to act as the biological father to her first child, William. The two later begin a romantic relationship, and become renegades from the New Syndicate. ---- Walter Skinner Darius Michaud Alvin Kersh John Doggett Monica Reyes Enemies "Cigarette Smoking Man" Miscellaneous Information Religious Beliefs Immortality There are hints given throughout the series that Scully may actually be immortal. The earliest known reference to this occurs in Season 3, during the episode "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose". Mulder and Scully investigate a man (Clyde Bruckman) who can predict how people are going to die. When Scully asks Bruckman how she is going to die, he smiles and replies, "You don't." In the episode "Never Again", Scully got a tattoo of an Ouroboros. The Ouroboros is an ancient symbol symbolizing immortality and the cyclic nature of the Universe. The immortality thread was again mentioned in "Tithonus". Scully investigated Alfred Fellig, a crime scene photographer who claimed to have the ability to predict when people would die. Fellig told Scully he saw Death come for him once but missed; it took someone else instead. As a result, he could not die. Scully was accidentally shot by her new temporary partner, but before she died, Fellig asked her to look away. Scully recovered fully, but Fellig died instead. Mulder suggested that Fellig took her place in death, which if true, suggests she is now immortal, as Fellig was. Fellig, at the time of his death was approximately 200 years old, and his death was by his choice alone. Fellig's age can be extrapolated by using his reference to the Yellow Fever epidemic in New York City (1791-1799) as a child. In another episode "Monday" Scully and Mulder are repeatedly killed in an explosion but eventually survive because the day keeps replaying which allows them to change the events that take place leading up to their demise. The reason that is suggested in the episode for this ultimate deja vu is that what is supposed to happen by fate is not what has been observed, to include Mulder and Scully's death. The day finally continues only after Scully and Mulder survive the episode. This would suggest that Scully or Mulder have been fated to not die. It was also hinted that Scully may have obtained her immortality from the chip that was implanted in her neck. The Cigarette Smoking Man took Scully to see the 118-year-old Marjorie Butters, who looked very healthy at such old age. Marjorie had the same chip implanted "En Ami". This is probably a direct result of the alien technology that was used to create an alien/human hybrid that would survive the black oil (known as purity) in the impending global holocaust. However, Agent Scully could still be killed, as were many other women with the implant, but she would probably be resistant to the effects of age, disease and harmful pathogens that most are not. Background Information When Scully is first introduced in the script of the The X-Files' pilot episode, she is established as being in her late 20s and is described as "intelligent, self-assured, with an unblushing sense of her own femininity". The scene is set in Quantico's FBI Academy and the script states that "Scully commands attention." Appearances External Links Scully, Dana Scully, Dana Scully, Dana Category:Scully family Scully, Dana